From Jonah to Pinocchio, from the Leviathan of legend to Free Willy, humans have been transfixed by the whale: as a fearful threat, a hunted quarry and- in the greatest whaling book of them all, Herman Melville's Moby Dick- a literary metaphor, narrated by its ambiguous anti-hero Ishmael.

In Leviathan, the acclaimed writer Philip Hoare explores his own passion for whales. Following in Ishmael's footsteps, he uncovers the troubled history of man and whale. How have we travelled so far, from killing whales for their oil and blubber, to seeing them as a fragile wonder? And on his personal journey from the north of England to Cape Cod- and finally to the middle of the Atlantic- he seeks to discover why these strange, beautiful and mysterious animals still exert such a grip on our imagination.